Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Exceptionalism is an expression of the aninmus dominandi of powerful nations who refuse to submit to established rules of human coexistence and reject customary international law. Instead, these actors invent new rules as they go along and pretend that their fabled “rules based international order” somehow has legitimacy. A recent study established by Professor Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University) for the UN Summit of the Future[1], provides an index ranking Barbados first and the United States last in the list of countries likely to support UN principles and international solidarity[2].
A close relative of exceptionalism is chauvinism, sometimes falsely labelled patriotism in order to make it sound more palatable, even noble, although the obvious imbalance makes us feel vaguely uneasy about it. Exceptionalism has been successful hitherto because its victims possess scarce power to effectively oppose it, weaker countries being blackmail victims, in fear of military and other intervention. Exceptionalism is a manifestation of that old rule we remember from the Melian Dialogue[3] in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War – “the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must”. This also reflects the Latin saying “quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi” – What Jupiter can get away with, is not what we bovines are permitted to do.
Throughout history The Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Spaniards, British have practiced “might is right” with impunity. Notable practitioners in the 21st century are the United States, its NATO vassals, plus Israel, with the support and complicity of the mainstream media. Indeed, public relations and relentless propaganda have succeeded in persuading many that exceptionalism and militant interventionism are O.K. This perception prevails in the “collective West”, but the Global Majority in Latin America, Africa and Asia does not seem to agree with the pastel colours of US benevolence. A new multipolar world is gradually emerging.
The spirit of exceptionalism pervades Western society and reveals itself in much of what our politicians, academics and journalists say and do. Thus, we remember US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s statement that the United States is the “indispensable nation”[4]. She is also remembered for an interview in which she expressed the view that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children (UNICEF estimates) “was worth it”[5] because of the ultimate positive goal to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The end justifies the means. Her approach is not too far from the self-serving statements by George W. Bush before, during and after the Iraq war, or from Donald Trump’s pompous “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) slogan, or from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s jubilant admission, “we lied, we cheated, we stole”[6]. On an even lower moral plane we situate Hillary Clinton’s comment on Moammar Gaddafi’s killing as “We came, we saw, he died.”[7] This was hubris at its worst.
Exceptionalism flourishes in the universe of American solipsism – only we matter. In a certain sense, this Weltanschauung echoes a Calvinistic tradition carried by the Puritans to Massachusetts in the 17thcentury[8]. The pious Pilgrims saw themselves as the “elect”, predestined to occupy the lands of North America as their rightful heritage, to be fruitful and multiply[9], successors as they were of old Jerusalem, the city on the hill. They set the stage for the muscled American exceptionalism of later centuries, as proclaimed in the Monroe Doctrine and implemented in the geopolitics of Manifest Destiny[10]. This mental disposition made it possible to dispossess and ethnically cleanse North America of its native indigenous population, the Algonquins, Crees, Cherokees, Dakotas, Hopi, Iroquois, Lakotas, Mohawks, Navajos, Pequots, Seminoles, Sioux, Squamish, etc., who once numbered 10 million human beings and by the end of the 19th century had been reduced to three hundred thousand[11].
Few Americans have been willing to recognize the magnitude of this tragedy, which Martin Luther King Jr. rightly called “genocide”. In 1964, four years before he was assassinated, MLK published a remarkable book Why we can’t Wait.[12] On page 141 we read:
“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. »[13] That too was a form of American exceptionalism.”
The relationship between international law and human rights
International law and human rights law are intimately related and mutually reinforcing. Thus, when international law is breached with impunity, the entire system suffers, including the human rights protection mechanisms. Applying international law in an arbitrary manner means that some human beings are not fully protected by the law, are left behind, while others enjoy privileges; it cements a Herrenmensch philosophy and entails a separate and distinct violation of the most fundamental principle of human rights : The equality of all human beings.
Exceptionalism violates the dignity of the individual when the law favours some, but is used to exploit, oppress, and persecute others. It contravenes article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stipulates “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. ”[14]
Exceptionalism also breaches article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR): ”All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. »[15]
The exceptionalist approach to international law confirms the imperial prerogative to go to war, to engage in pre-emptive attacks on potential enemies. It reflects the pseudo-religious, pseudo-scientific philosophy of superiority. In order to counter this outlawry, the ICCPR stipulates in its article 20: “1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law. 2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”[16] It is no surprise that most of the countries of the “collective West” introduced reservations to the ICCPR stating that they would not accept Article 20.
This animus dominandi also violates article 4 of the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination[17]: “States Parties condemn all propaganda and all organizations which are based on ideas or theories of superiority of one race or group of persons of one colour or ethnic origin, or which attempt to justify or promote racial hatred and discrimination in any form, and undertake to adopt immediate and positive measures designed to eradicate all incitement to, or acts of, such discrimination…” Similarly, the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid[18] is violated – not only in South Africa before Nelson Mandela, but today in Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu.
In this connection it is also appropriate to recall the words at the beginning of the US Declaration of Independence of 1776: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal…”[19] In the same tenor, the 1789 French Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen[20], article 1 of which stipulates : « Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits. »
Now, how does the doctrine of exceptionalism in domestic and international practice impact this over-arching principle of equality? In an op-ed published on 11 September 2013 in the New York Times, Vladimir Putin expressed a concern: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation…. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”[21]
Exceptionalism and the risk of nuclear confrontation
There are many dangers associated with exceptionalism. Especially in the nuclear age, some exceptionalist attitudes may cloud our perception, lead us to misjudge how others think, and thus hinder our assessment of risk. Countries that practice exceptionalism have traditionally exhibited a naive nonchalance about what they say and do. They like to gamble. They take risks for themselves and others. They provoke and expect that the other side will not react, that the provocation will be “absorbed”.
Alas, in the nuclear age it is not only the safety of the exceptionalist provoker that is at stake, but the fate of all of humanity. The US and NATO countries, notably the UK, have been playing vabanquefor years and they evidently think that they can do so indefinitely. While it should be obvious to all that no one is going to survive a nuclear confrontation, the US, UK and some NATO countries continue playing with fire and irresponsibly escalating the Ukraine war, instead of looking for ways to end the conflict by diplomacy and negotiation. This is yet another reason why the Global Majority in Latin America, Africa and Asia must become more vocal, because if NATO miscalculates, as it has done in the past, the consequences will be borne by all inhabitants of Planet Earth.
At the United Nations there is consensus that nuclear weapons must never be used. Already in 1995, the Security Council adopted resolution 984[22] and indefinitely extended the Non-Proliferation Treaty[23]. In 2004 the SC adopted Resolution 1540, imposing binding obligations on all States to establish domestic controls to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. On 20 November 2022 Resolution 2663 decided “that the 1540 Committee will conduct comprehensive reviews on the status of implementation of resolution 1540 (2004), including through the holding of open consultations of the Committee in New York, both after five years and prior to the renewal of its mandate…” and called on States “to take into account developments on the evolving nature of risk of proliferation and rapid advances in science and technology in their implementation of resolution 1540 (2004)”[24]. Meanwhile the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons[25] entered into force on 22 January 2021, but the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Israel are not states parties
Lip-service to international law is easy. Everybody does it. But can we rely on a dysfunctional United Nations to protect the world from risky vabanque politicians? The UN could not prevent NATO from violating the ius cogens prohibition of the use of force (Art. 2(4) UN Charter) and bombard Yugoslavia in 1999, destroying its territorial integrity under false pretences and in total impunity. In 2003, again under a demonstrably phoney pretext of weapons of mass destruction[26], the United States put together the infamous “coalition of the willing” to invade and devastate Iraq, just to complete the assault on the people of Iraq and the pillaging of its resources, already begun in 1991. The 2003 war, which Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned as an “illegal war”[27], constituted a rebellion against international law and the UN Charter by a considerable number of States ostensibly committed to the rule of law and human rights. No one was held accountable.
Let us not forget that already in August 1945, when Japan had already lost the war in the Pacific and the Unites States was not under any existential threat by Japan, Harry Truman decided to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States, in its singular hubris, demanded “unconditional surrender” from Japan and would accept nothing less, notwithstanding peace feelers extended by Japan since 1944[28]. Consistent with its exceptionalist philosophy, the United States decided to humiliate the Japanese and their Emperor. The atomic weapon was used not for any legitimate military purpose but rather for psychological purposes – to terrorise the Japanese into submission and at the same time to warn the Soviets that hitherto the US was the only hegemon and that it would not hesitate to use the atomic bomb against any potential enemy, even pre-emptively. Hitherto only the United States has used nuclear weapons in war. If it did it twice against Japan, can it do it again, this time against Russia and China[29]?
In the nuclear age this bravado lacks persuasive power. The Russians have more nuclear warheads than the United States, and they also have hypersonic missiles to deliver them, which the US lacks. It is time to revisit John F. Kennedy’s commencement address of 10 June 1963 at American University: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”[30]
I fear that in the current world of fake news and manipulated narratives, in today’s brainwashed society, Kennedy would be accused of being an “appeaser”[31], even a traitor. And yet, today the fate of all of humanity is at stake. What we really need is another JFK or Jimmy Carter in the White House.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that American exceptionalism contravenes the letter and spirit of the UN Charter, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, countless General Assembly Resolutions including 2625, 3314, 60/1. Unilateralism is also incompatible with many articles of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which provides in its article 26 that treaties must be observed in good faith, pacta sunt servanda. Among the treaties that must be enforced, we acknowledge first and foremost the UN Charter, article 103 of which, the supremacy clause, gives the Charter precedence over all other treaties, including the treaty of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
There are plenty of United States academics that have warned us about the danger of nuclear annihilation and the necessity to deescalate. Among them we count Professors John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Stephen Kinzer, Francis Boyle. Alas, they are modern Cassandras. The sad fact is that exceptionalism and unilateralism are part of the DNA of many of our political leaders in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Public relations and propaganda have convinced many that NATO is a “defense alliance”. Yet, since 1991 and the dismantlement of the Warsaw Pact, NATO’s raison d’être disappeared, and it morphed into an aggressive military force whose function is not defence, but expansion for the sake of expansion, expansion to bully others into submission to the will of Washington and Brussels, an organization that pretends to usurp the functions of the United Nations.
NATO forces have committed aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. but the fake news that accompanied those wars by now have evolved into fake history, and many believe the apologetics of NATO’s criminal actions. In a very real sense, NATO should be labelled a criminal organization within the meaning of the Nuremberg Judgment of 1946 and articles 9 and 10 of the Statute of the International Military Tribunal (London Agreement of 8 August 1945, ironically adopted two days after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and one day before the annihilation of Nagasaki).
Government lawyers bear significant responsibility for this outlawry, because instead of advising political leaders how best to implement the UN Charter and judgments of the International Court of Justice, how to keep the peace, how to practice international solidarity, they look for ways how to weasel out of international commitments, how to invent loopholes to treaties, how to formulate exceptionalist interpretations of international law.
On this 21st day of September 2024, International Day of Peace[32], we are closer to annihilation than ever before since 1945. NATO is out of control. What we need is an immediate cease fire and diplomatic negotiations to end the wars in Ukraine and in Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria. The Global Majority must reject the obsolete paradigms of exceptionalism and unilateralism and rediscover the spirituality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pax optima rerum.
Notes.
[1] https://www.un.org/en/summit-of-the-future
[2] https://impakter.com/the-nations-most-and-least-likely-to-support-un-principles/
[3] https://www.thecollector.com/melian-dialogue-thucydides/
[4] https://1997-2001.state.gov/statements/1998/980219a.html
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPt-zXn05ac
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXDU48RHLU
[8] David Stannard, American Holocaust, Oxford 1992.
[9] Genesis,9:7.
[10] Richard Drinnon, Facing West, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
[11] Alfred de Zayas, Countering Mainstream Narratives, Clarity Press, Atlanta 2022.
[12] Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: New American Library, Signet Classics, 2000); de Zayas, Countering Mainstream Narratives, p. 54.
[14] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
[15] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights
[16] Ibid.
[17] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-convention-elimination-all-forms-racial
[18] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Apartheid.pdf
[19] https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/resources/text
[20] https://www.elysee.fr/la-presidence/la-declaration-des-droits-de-l-homme-et-du-citoyen
[21] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html
[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_984
[23] https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/npt/
[24] https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n22/716/75/pdf/n2271675.pdf
[25] https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/
[26] Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq, Pantheon, 2004.
[27] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm
[28] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2049539
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies/article/abs/japanese-peace-maneuver-in-19441/1B5B584A53782C211CB28AE71BA3EA56
[29] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/27/united-states-middle-east-wars-asia-europe-same-time/
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/could-america-win-new-world-war
[30] https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/14/natos-death-wish-will-destroy-not-only-europe-but-the-rest-of-the-world-as-well/
NATO’s “Death Wish” Will Destroy Not Only Europe but the Rest of the World as Well
[31] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/09/appeasement-reconsidered/
[32] https://internationaldayofpeace.org/
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